__________________http://www.flickr.com/photos/27764102@N02/"My opinion is, a designer should always try to enhance the inworld experience for his clients. In a virtual world, where individuality is hard to obtain, selling modifieable items is like selling a bit of freedom. Think about that." ~Silent Sky

So you use 3DS Max or Blender or some other app outside SL to make mesh. Whats the issue here?

There isn't any issue. In-world vs 3rd party software is a false dichotomy. An efficient work flow would be to have BOTH your external software on one window, and the Aditi beta grid open on the other. Then you can export and upload, see how it looks, then go back and make changes as needed and repeat. (Aditi cause uploads are free there for testing).

What Dusan mentioned at 32:00 in the video is really the main reason why I am looking forward to mesh in SL. Lots of people, myself included, have used mesh modeling tools in a hobby context for years, but there has never been an easy way to experience the creations interactively in a shared environment. Of course you could choose to work on a game modification project and create mesh assets for the Unreal or Half Life engines, but the goals and demands of those projects were quite different from those of a virtual world.

And Elrik is right, too: Things will go the other way as well, i.e. SL residents who take their first steps with mesh in the coming weeks might later end up using their newly acquired knowledge outside of SL as well, e.g. creating content for video games or picking up a career in professional CG production.

Hopefully we can get 64x64x64s on the production grid grid soon? Or do we have to wait for mesh? Hmm, looks like they will need to tweak link distances too.

Three immediate changes this will have:

1) A lot of creations will finally be able to backed up. For those of us that need large prims for what we make (houses, mountains, etc) the fact that we can not export megas is pretty much saying 'you can not export anything at all' as most of the megas were created by someone else.

2) Some inventory bloat of builders will get reduced. No more folders of 100s of megas. True, larger than 64 still has its use, but is not as common so can be kept primmed up.

3) We will be able to create megas in the exact size we need rather than use what is available. Where is my 11.002 x 52.785 x 19.017?

The reason they have limited it to 10m^3 is because prims are placed based on their center point. Prims can overhang into a neighboring lot as long as the center point is within your lot. With 10m the overhang is limited to 5m, with 64m the overhang can be 32m.

If they have found a way to fix the overhang problem, then yay! If not, then the change to 64 is a mistake.

Prims can overhang into a neighboring lot as long as the center point is within your lot.

Yes, that's an issue with every prim, even if it is 1cm in size. And as far as I can remember it could never be proven that such overhanging prims, and especially megaprims, did indeed have any impact on server performance.

So regardless if 1cm, 10m, 32m or 64m, it will be a half hearted implementation that can only be a compromise again. But we have to see if anything will change at all.

Yes, that's an issue with every prim, even if it is 1cm in size. And as far as I can remember it could never be proven that such overhanging prims, and especially megaprims, did indeed have any impact on server performance.

So regardless if 1cm, 10m, 32m or 64m, it will be a half hearted implementation that can only be a compromise again. But we have to see if anything will change at all.

It's not about server performance it's about inworld drama and an explosion of ARs when people place a prim overhanging 32m into the next parcel that's only 23m wide (a 512).

__________________*My concern can be measured in micro give-a-shits, and I'm working on nanotechnology!*

And as far as I can remember it could never be proven that such overhanging prims, and especially megaprims, did indeed have any impact on server performance.

The last time they opened up the window for megaprim creation, I remember Andrew Linden saying that many in the lab were reluctant to go larger because it was very difficult to efficiently address the problem of how to visualize a large megaprim across a sim border. IIRC, at the time, an avatar within 10m of a sim border was given visibility of prims whose centers were 10m into the next sim. So, you would have this phenomenon where a big overhanging prim was completely invisible until you actually crossed the sim border, at which point it flashed into existence and ACK! He implied that they hadn't figured out how to fix that without using an inordinate amount of sim and/or render pipeline processing.

Lately, the lab has been taking the approach of addressing such knotty problems incrementally, instead of letting advancements languish until the perfect solution is discovered. So, yay!

If they have found a way to fix the overhang problem, then yay! If not, then the change to 64 is a mistake.

I really really really hope they do not change that via technical means. It can have some unintended consequences.

Those joint builds between plots? Yeah, forget about them. No matter where the center point is you could not overhang (assumedly if they turn off object entry).

I (and I assume many others) try to pretty up the Linden landscaping by using up some of my own prims to put flowers nearer the Linden road (with the center point on my land) by our places. Technically a violation of other property, yes, but obviously done out of positive intent.

Since most of us who build already have thousands of mega prims in inventory, the problem is here already. I have some megas over 100m, I have to be careful where I place them to keep them on my land. I have had a problem with regular prims overlapping a sim border and I put up a very thin phantom just over my side of the border so the neighbor could move the prims that were over. Unless its deliberate, we have always been able to work it out, sometimes its return them, sometimes its move them.

__________________Baroness Menchor, the Deadly, of the Great Army of the Invincible Infidel, Whose Great Swarms of Evil and Horror Laid Waste to the Souls of a Million True Believers and Left Their Souls Rotting in the Summer Sun for the Buzzards to to Ravish as Their Souls Sunk to the Depths of Torment and Hopelessness, Abandoned by Their Gods.

Youth and strength can almost always be overcome by old age and treachery